SES Chicago - December 7-11, 2009

July 15, 2008

Google Launches Election Video Gadget with Transcribed Speech Text

Google has launched a new iGoogle gadget that allows users to search for election videos. The gadget uses speech recognition technology, but it leaves a lot to be desired.

The only speech that is transcribed are fragmented snippets. If you click on little yellow squares along the play bar, you can find out the snippet that occurs at that point and jump to that point in the video.

Of course, what would be most useful is a fully transcribed version of the videos. So much of politics seems to be about statements taken out of context (on both sides of the aisle). At least the full video is there.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 9:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

February 5, 2008

Google is the Bomb! Obama, McC, Mitt, Hill, Huck, Paul on Super Tuesday

Google is the bomb on Super Tuesday for election results. Check out the new Google News Elections coverage section and Google Maps. No X-Ray vision superheroes but "primaries.XML?" Google's got it. No man of steel with X-Ray vision, but Google's got "rikanu" in Boston/Cambridge, MA who's "gone voting."

You won't find Obama in 'Bama or Clinton on Capitol Hill but you can watch them on the new Google mashup on "Twittervision." (YouTube is so last year.)

Don't worry old media, Googlers are still tweeting about CNN plasma touch screens and who's got the best big box election coverage.

On Google, though, you can watch your Google Gadget fill in the returns for McC, Mitt, Obama, Hill, Paul, and the rest of the Super Tuesday superheroes.

If all the twittervision tweets on Obama watch parties correlate with exit polls, lots of states will rock with Barack. Looks like he's the Ba-Rocket.

For the Repubs, looks like Mac is back. Mitt? This is it. Paul? That's all, folks.

For complete elections coverage, stay tuned to your favorite Internet channel.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 7:23 PM | Permalink

December 20, 2007

Free Google Flip Video Camcorder --No purchase necessary

OK, strike "no purchase necessary." Free Flip video camcorder: "big purchase necessary?"

Google gave big-time advertisers and SEMs (whose clients spend big) a Flip Video Ultra Series camcorder with recording time up to 30 min. and 1GB internal memory.

Search marketer Shimon Sandler recorded an Oscar-worthy short film (YouTubed) of his Google Video Ultra gift being unwrapped. You'll watch the film again and again, if only to get into the Xmas spirit of green envy that children of all ages feel during the Holiday Season.

Google Flip flopped with all the SEMs who only received Google 2GB USB memory cards instead of the Google Flip (with MSRP of $149.99!). The 2GoogleByte USB card was described by our friends at SERoundtable as more or less a lump of coal -- way inferior to last year's Google gift gadget: a sweet digital picture frame.

It would seem only the FTC approves of Google acquisitions these days.

Here at Search Engine Watch, we'll be providing the P.O. Box for Google Customer Returns and the address of the secret Google Gift Exchange location.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 6:46 PM | Permalink

October 5, 2007

Discussion with Sep Kamvar About Gadgets

Last week I traveled out to California for a series of meetings at Google, and also so I could be at the Searchification event. One of the people I sat down with at Google was Sepandar Kamvar (aka Sep Kamvar). While Sep is well known for his work on personalization at Google, our conversation focused on another area, that of Google gadgets.

I learned a few important things about the Google Gadget world. One of these is that getting a large number of gadgets you have developed installed by other users is not something that will help with your web search rankings. This is consistent with a conversation I had later with Matt Cutts, where Matt told me that this signal was simply too noisy.

On another note, promotion of gadgets is something that requires some effort as well. It's easier to get something to go viral if you nudge it along by getting the word out. Sep suggested that one way to do this is to buy Google Adwords ads to promote the gadget.

Another thing I learned is that placement in the Google Gadget Directory is based on popularity. You can get a lot of visibility here, but only if you achieve a high ranking. Note that user deletions of gadget installations also count as a negative signal for purposes of ranking in the Google directory.

We also talked about what makes a really good gadget. Here are the 3 main points I took out of the conversation:

  1. The content changes daily or more than daily. Freshness is a big reason why people install a gadget. Trivia, time, and weather gadgets all have done well (don't necessarily rush off and do these, many of them already exist).
  2. The gadget needs to be useful in a small space. No matter how useful the information is, users are not going to ties up en entire screen to get it.
  3. It should deliver useful content in the gadget itself. In other words, don't make the user click through to your site to get the information they want. Such a structure is not likely to get particularly much interest. Put it right there in the gadget where they get what the need most of the time. Of course, when they want additional information, they can click through to your site, and you always get the branding benefit.

Posted by at 10:50 AM | Permalink

March 23, 2007

Google Blog Bar Proving Popular

Launched last week, the Google Blog Bar has proven popular and received quite a bit of feedback, according to the Google AJAX Search API Blog.

Similar to the News Bar and Video Bar, the Blog Bar is offered in horizontal and vertical styles.

From the feedback given over the first week, Google has added the ability to select only the blogs specified. This allows people to limit the postings to a particular blog or group of blogs... SEW blog for example would work quite well.

UPDATE: This post has inspired Matt Cutts to weigh in on this latest bit of "Google Flair," as he likes to call such widgets that "spruce up a page."

Posted by Frank Watson at 10:57 AM | Permalink

March 1, 2007

IBM's WebSphere to Support Google Gadgets

CRN reports that IBM is now opening WebSphere to Google Gadgets. One notable aspect of this is that this "could make Gadgets like Google Maps directions available to business users even when they're offline".

This move should enable a much broader use of Google Gadgets in enterprise environments that are traditionally resistant to the use of such applications because they present a security risk. IBM's implementation will manage the security issues, and the use of the gadgets can be audited and tracked.

Posted by at 6:14 PM | Permalink

October 4, 2006

Put Google Gadgets & No Clickthrough Needed Google Search On Your Site

Niall Kennedy has a good summary of Google's Universal Gadgets that can now be put on the Google Personalized Homepage, Google Desktop, Google Pages or your own web site using the Google Gadgets For Your Webpage collection of applets. The Google announcement on this is here and tells you how you can even have your own pony. Google also announced the release of Google AJAX Search API that enables you to place a Google search box on your site. Google's allowed this for ages, but with AJAX, people can search without having to leave your web site.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:43 AM | Permalink

May 10, 2006

New Google Desktop Beta Features Google Gadgets

The Inside Google Desktop blog announced the release of a new version of Google Desktop. The new version's main feature are Google Gadgets, some of the many widgets include Weather Globe, Google Calendar and many more.

Developers can also build Google Gadgets themselves, more information on that at SDK Overview section. Let's not forget that Yahoo bought Konfabulator and renamed it to Yahoo Widgets, plus I never use Apple's widgets (i.e. Dashboard).

Postscript From Danny: A few more points not covered in the Google blog post which are covered as part of Google Press Day presentations:

  • It's supposed to automatically suggest gadgets to try based on your web history. Go to a lot of movie sites? Then it might suggest movie-related gadgets, for instance.  
  • The new Google Desktop will sync settings across computers, if you sign in through a Google Account. It will remember your to do lists, gadget preferences and other things regardless of where you are.  

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 2:47 PM | Permalink

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